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Hemingway Was a Spy

In 1940, as he was preparing to go on a trip to China, the writer agreed to work for the NKVD, the Soviet foreign intelligence agency. Harvey Klehr reviews “Writer, Sailor, Soldier, Spy” by Nicholas Reynolds.

By

Harvey Klehr

March 13, 2017 6:54 p.m. ET

Before he committed suicide in 1961, Ernest Hemingway raved about being under FBI surveillance and how agents were tapping his phones. Many years later, his friend and biographer A.E. Hotchner charged that his FBI file, released under the Freedom of Information Act, proved that this paranoia was based on reality: that J. Edgar Hoover, worried about Hemingway’s fondness for Fidel Castro and still incensed over his support for the Spanish Republic in the 1930s, had harassed the Nobel Prize winner and contributed to his “anguish...